3562 The Lombok Welcome Band
3579 A rice farmer spreading out the rice to dry. It sometimes amazes me that a good picture can actually be taken through the window of a moving bus.
3632 Boys at the museum. The little guy second from the right had nice English skills.
3639 The girls were much more shy. Don’t know if they knew any English because they wouldn’t talk.
3656 This is the square pond at the Mayura Water Palace. The temple is at the top of the stairs across the way.
Oct 30 – At Sea. Another routine day at sea. Nothing unusual except they had another Mongolian BBQ on the Lido deck by the pool.
Oct 31 - Lembar, Lombok, Indonesia. Lombok is a new island for us so we’re interested to see what’s here. Lombok is classified as a ‘Palau’, an island in the local dialect. Smaller landmasses are called ‘Gili’ and many of them in this area are resorts. There are three famous ones in this bay. Gili Nanggo is the largest and has a very nice resort as well as a good reef for diving and snorkeling.
We are landing in the city of Lembar. Situated inside a small bay on the southwest coast of the island, it’s a small city with no real port so our ship will anchor in the bay and we will ride ashore on the ship’s tenders (aka lifeboats). The ship has 14 lifeboats, 4 of which are larger, enclosed boats that they use in ports where we can’t dock to shuttle people ashore. The other 10 are large open boats like you saw in the movie Titanic, 2 of the 10 are a little smaller and are used for command and control if we have to abandon ship. The island is not large, about 40 miles wide by 50 miles long and mostly square except for the fishhook like isthmus at the south western corner that helps for the bay in which we’re anchored. (I guess you’ve noticed that sometimes I let them dangle (ex. we’re anchored in.) and sometimes I don’t. When I do it’s not because I don’t know they’re dangling, in those cases I just don’t care.)
We’re about 17 miles south of the island’s main port, Mataram and almost all the tours will be going there. There must be some reason we’re not using the port, (congestion, lack of dock space, etc.), because all the tours would be much shorter if we were there. This area was originally a Dutch port in the colonial era.
Since the towns on this island are so small, horse cart (cidomo) is a common mode of transportation. Of course, as with most places Asian motorbikes and scooters are everywhere. The horses on the island are small, but then so are the carts. They seem to be strong as they can pull heavily loaded carts at a pretty good clip.
On the way to Mataram we passed rice and corn fields as well as water cress plantations that are situated on rivers. They have apple, mango and papaya orchards. I was surprised by the apple because most apples that grow in the US require a cold season to force the sap out of the tree for them to bloom. We went through small towns with their markets and usually more than one motorbike repair shop. Rice is being harvested at the moment and we saw all the stages of the process in operation.
We arrived at the Nusa Tenggara Barat Province Museum in about 45 minutes. It has displays of the local culture and geology. The best displays were jewelry, cloth, musical instruments and Kris knives. They had mannequins dressed in the wedding cloths of various people groups. They had a great model of Borobudur but it was very dark and under Plexiglas, really hard to photograph.
As we walked out of the museum, tables had been set up in the shade of the entrance pavilion. On the tables they had laid out traditional Lombokian treats. Again, I was amazed at the unwillingness of people to try them. Even after others had eaten one and completely described the ingredients, it was a no go. Sad!
They had little cups of custard, red balls that were made from sticky rice paste with a fruit flavor (the type of fruit they tasted like depended on who you asked.), a little bread roll with cream filling, a small tart shell with a whipped cream cheese like filling, green squares of some sort of cheese with grated yellow cheese on top (these were the prettiest) and small turnovers filled with apple. Whatever apples they can grow here without a cold season are delicious. I also tried the little bread roll and the green and yellow cheese squares and they were also excellent. They were serving coffee and tea. I decided to have half a cup of coffee just so I could say I had a cup of Java in Lombok.
As we were on the patio snacking a group of school children in uniform showed up at the museum and sat in another pavilion to have their box lunches. As with kids everywhere the strange people were a big hit. The boys, as boys will, talked to us immediately, some in limited but well spoken English. The girls adopted more of a wait and see attitude. The boys work black slacks and a short-sleeved shirt that appeared to be printed with large and small poppies connected by lace or at least surrounded by a design. Everything was in print, no actual lace. The girls wore a shoe top length black skirt with a long-sleeved shirt of the same material. On their heads they wore the typical, only the face shows, white Muslim scarf with a border of the dress material and a headband to hold it on of the same cloth. The looked like little dolls.
Snack time soon ended and we set off to the Narmada Water Palace. The palace is in the city of Narmada but it’s original name is Mayura Water Palace. It was built by a Balinese king of Lombok in the 1740s. There’s a large artificial lake here that looks like Segara Anak Lake in the caldera of the Rinjani Volcano. The original lake is a holy site where offerings are offered. When, in 1805, the Raja of Mataram, became too old to climb the mountain to make his sacrafices he had this lake built to be a substitute place to make his offerings.
Our first stop was at a covered pavilion high over the gardens. It overlooks a large square pond with a fountain at the center. Between the pavilion and the pond you have to descend 6 grassy terraces that range in height from about 4 to 8 feet. One short terrace above the pond there’s a sort of bath house or cabana structure. Across this pond are two small covered pavilions with the stairs to enter a temple half way between them.
From there we walked down to look at the artificial lake and the swimming pool. While we were at the lake a lady was doing her laundry in a small area near the lakeshore obviously designed for that purpose. Her two little girls played nearby. Just at the lakeside there’s a fountain where the fresh water enters the artificial lake. Made a very nice scene. Uphill from the lake is a very large swimming pool that’s open to the public. Very few people were there but a young girl was playing in the wading pool with her mom. I was a little jealous because it’s hot and humid and I wished I could strip to my undies and jump in the pool too.
There’s a temple on the property, Pura Kalasa, which is still used for the Balinese Pujawali celebration every year. It was just a couple of days ago and the flower offerings were still evident on the floor and grounds of the temple.
While driving to our next stop I had to ask about the small tables I saw along the road that had various types of bottles setting on them and usually a man standing nearby. The bottles had no labels and the clear one seemed to contain a yellow liquid. The guide said these were mini-gas stations. If your scooter runs out of gas you can get a bottle of premixed gas from these men to get you to the gas station. Apparently running out of gas is a Lombokian Island tradition. He says that he doesn’t understand why they do it because the gas from these impromptu fill-ups costs at least double what you’d pay at the pump.
Our next destination was the Lingar Temple built in about 1714. Some of the original statues of the animist temple sight are still there. Now it’s a ‘unified’ temple and is used by Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims.
The temple ‘gates’ that are currently standing are constructed of brick with cast plaster or carved stone inserts. The inserts are usually natural designs or images from religious stories.
Just outside the temple there was a below ground level fountain for ceremonial washing rituals. Inside the open temple were rocks with robes and sashes on them representing various deities to which offerings could be made. It reminded me of some of the animistic idols we saw in the voodoo religious areas of The Gambia. Didn’t look like a lot of work had been put into fashioning the idols.
From the temple we drove to the Sentosa Hotel for lunch. We ate outdoors next to the hotel’s beach at tables in the shade of trees or under small awnings. The lunch was good but nothing unusual, rice, fish, tempura seafood, beef sate and Chinese style broccoli cooked with chopped green onion. They had a small band there to play for us, 2 guitars, a base and a violin. They were pretty good musicians, but the best part was their songbook. John Denver, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong (the guy loved singing in that craggy Armstrong voice) and other American music. It was very nostalgic, if not very Indonesian. The hotel has a great beach and nice grounds with really pretty swimming pool.
Our last stop was the hit of the day. The village of Banyu Mulek is known for its handmade pottery. Most residents of the village are potters and specialize in one sort of pot, bowl or vase. From the bus park we all boarded cidomos to ride to the pottery area entrance. I expected the ride to be a short one but it took us about 15 minutes to get there. We were sharing the road with motorbikes and the occasional car or small truck. As we rode through the village we created quite a stir among the children who saw us. There must have been about 20 little cidomos each with 2 or 3 passengers clopping down the road at a nice clip. (Notice how I worked clip and clop into the description of the horse cart ride. I usually just let those things go without comment but I had to say something about that one. It’s ok to write and tell me when you find a play on words of any kind. I like to know people are getting it. Please delete my journal from your reply, especially the pictures as they really clog up the satellite feed.) The kids and even most of the adults had to smile at the sight. All the kids waived and so did about half the adults. The ones who could stop laughing long enough to raise their arms. Nothing endears you to most locals quite like travelers quietly making polite fools of themselves.
In the production area the streets are narrow and not straight, more like paths actually. We walked between houses most of which had an open but covered area in the back or at the side. In these areas we saw women making all sorts of pottery from small bowls to huge urns. They sit on the ground or on very short stools to work. The ladies making large pots and vases will sit on a little taller stool. They don’t really turn the pots but, like most pueblo potters in the American Southwest, they build the object out of coils of clay. This coiled structure is then scraped smooth to make the finished item.
Some items are fired in a coal or charcoal kiln much like those you’d see anywhere you find serious traditional potters. Other pieces, usually the really big ones are buried in a rectangular pattern, top down, under large piles of hay and straw. This pile is then set on fire and kept partially wet to keep it from blazing out in too short a time. When the pile is reduced to ash, there are the pots. The brown clay turns red when fired. The guide said this pottery is shipped all over the world.
After a short stop at a shop that sells the pottery locally it was back to the ship for Halloween evening.
Our costumes for the evening were somewhat eclectic. Diana wore a black dress with her newly acquired OSU Beaver t-shirt and orange witch’s hat. For my part I wore black slacks, a black shirt and my newly acquired black baseball cap with the OSU beaver on the crown. (For those of you who might not know the Beaver colors are orange and black. We got the Beaver gear while visiting our friends Betty and Dorothy on the way to Seattle.) Unfortunately before Diana found the orange witch’s hat she bought one of those head decorations with a plastic head pincher to hold it on. It was a small black witch’s hat with two long, green pigtails hanging on either side. She made me wear it over my cap for a photo. Yikes!! It was a nice evening.
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